Testament, by Sabine Delafon, published by Cura Books. Sabine Delafon in conversation with Vera Maglioni

Testament (2011 – today) is an ongoing conceptual project by Sabine Delafon, born from an obsessive act of collecting and reinterpreting one of the most symbolic objects of identity and status—the business card. In Testament, Delafon subverts the business card mythology, transforming each card into a unique 10 x 7 cm artifact signed by another artist, blurring the lines between authorship, exchange, and artistic legacy. Her practice is driven by a ritualistic fascination with names, signatures, and the silent agreements embedded in the act of giving and receiving. Through this ever-expanding collection, she constructs an alternative archive of artistic networks, where presence is marked not only by creation but primarily by consent. “You simply need to reply positively to this message,” she tells her addressee—a phrase that echoes the enigmatic commands of Alice in Wonderland–a bottle labeled “Drink me”, where a simple gesture sets an irreversible transformation into motion.

Presented in a tiny limited-edition format each card is printed in its real dimensions, offering an intimate, tactile experience of Delafon’s project. The book becomes a conceptual object in itself—an archive of connection and exchange, where the minimalist presentation invites the viewer to reflect on the meaning behind each signature and the persona behind it. At once a self-portrait and a collective gesture, Testament is a meditation on the fluid nature of identity and the ways artists inscribe themselves into history—not through their own hand, but through the hands of others.

Sabine Delafon is a French artist living in Italy. Her main areas of interest are human identity, love, and spirituality. She adopts a conceptual approach that emphasizes repetition, primarily through photography. Travel plays a central role as a means of collecting signs—signatures, street signs, four-leaf clovers, photo booth portraits, etc. The serial format is intrinsically tied to a body of work that evolves and enriches itself over time. This seriality represents continuity and discipline, a reflection on patience, ritual, (non)change, and accumulation. It is a continuous variation on a theme